10 April 2018 - NPWJ News Digest on FGM and Women's Rights

Articles

The staggering number of FGM cases recorded in Birmingham every single dayby BirminghamLive, 10 Apr 2018

Almost two cases of female genital mutilation a day on average are being identified by doctors in the West Midlands. Analysis by BirminghamLive of NHS Digital figures reveals that in 2017, there were 620 cases where a woman was newly recorded in the FGM dataset. Overall, the total number of attendances in 2017 where FGM was identified or a procedure for FGM was carried out was 1,010.

Prevalent in Cameroon and other African immigrant communities in the United Kingdom, breast ironing or flattening – also known as breast sweeping in South Africa – is taken lightly when it is clearly a harmful practice. This is the pounding and massaging of a girl’s breasts to stop them from developing. Practised mainly in West and Central Africa – Benin, Chad, Ivory Coast, Guinea-Bissau, Guinea-Conakry, Kenya, Togo and Zimbabwe – mothers or female relatives usually use hard or heated objects including stones, spatulas and pestles to flatten the breasts.

On 23 March, tens of thousands of people hit the streets of Polish cities to protest against imposing further restrictions on the abortion law. Poland’s is one of the strictest in Europe, second only to Ireland, where a referendum aiming at liberalising access to abortion is planned for May 25.